Apr 03

Managing Conflict in the Workplace

Communication Skills No Comments »

The first thing to understand is that conflict in the workplace is a reality. We can either live with it, ignore it or deal with it. We are often faced with conflict from early on in our careers but managing conflict is a key skill for effective management and can make the difference between a successful or unsuccessful manager. How a manager chooses to handle conflict defines their capability as a leader. A true leader recognises, understands and manages conflict. Avoiding it is not an option as it will not go away; instead it will only escalate.

Businessmen viewed from top sjlocke i Managing Conflict in the Workplace

© istockphoto.com/Sjlocke

To recognise and manage conflict, we need to understand:

1. Its causes
2. Its dangers
3. How to deal with it
4. Benefits of dealing with it

The causes can be as varied as the types of people working in an organisation. The causes range from competition, manipulative individuals, bruised egos, jealousy, blame games, unfair handling by superiors, to simply miscommunication and misunderstandings.

The dangers are infighting among staff, a loss of morale and loyalty to the employer, a destructive work atmosphere, anger and gossip among staff, barriers between individuals and teams, power struggle, non-co-operation, and worst of all, a high attrition rate, particularly of efficient and effective staff.

Ways of managing conflict can differ according to the nature of the conflict as well as the personality types involved. These are some general tips that can be useful in most cases.

  • First of all, if you are a manager dealing with conflict you should never be seen as subjective or having favourites. You must be seen as fair and consistent.
  • Always have a clearly defined code of conduct with an understanding that breaking this will not be tolerated.
  • Conflict should always be recognised, understood and dealt with at the earliest. It will not resolve by itself.
  • The benefits to each individual of co-operation and a conflict-free workplace with a healthy team spirit must be made absolutely clear. Effective communication and rapport building is the key.
  • As a manager you should know how to separate the person from the problem. In other words, deal with the behaviour and the situation without attacking the identity of the individual. This way it doesn’t become personal and there is a better chance of the employee listening with an open mind.
  • Invest in staff-development training in team management, emotional intelligence, communication skills including non-verbal, mediation and counselling skills, cultural awareness in global organisations, and leadership skills
  • Finally, anyone facing conflict should choose their battles. Know when to come down firmly and when to hold back so that you are not perceived as unfair and dictatorial.

The benefits of managing conflict effectively are just as numerous: high staff morale, high productivity resulting in financial gain, healthy work environment, effective team work saving time and stress, and loyalty to the employer resulting in staff retention to mention just a few. Effective and transformational leaders can even cherish the challenge of resolving conflict and take credit for a creative, productive workplace.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2013

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Nov 02

Smartphones Prolong the Working Day

Communication Skills No Comments »

The Telegraph has highlighted recent research suggesting that smartphone and tablet users add two hours to their working day. Apparently as many as nine out of ten office workers are now able to access their emails on their phones and two-thirds of us check our emails before we go to bed and again when we wake up in the morning. Weekends and holidays are also increasingly interrupted by work related phone calls and emails. In addition to the use of smart phones and tablets, most organisations now also have virtual desktops set up enabling employees to log in, access files and systems and work from any location at any time.

Chinese businessman with cellphone Hfng i Smartphones Prolong the Working Day

© istockphoto.com/Hfng

Clearly this ability to work on the go offers great advantages to organisations. If employees have already cleared their inboxes and responded to straightforward emails in their own time, they will reach their desks ready to get down to more productive or complex tasks. It also offers greater flexibility to us as employees to know that we have the ability to communicate outside of the office if, for example, we are running late, delayed at meetings or need to attend to personal matters during the working day. It can also be less stressful to know in advance what is coming our way at the start of day rather than walking in to a crisis at 9 o’clock.

However, there are also downsides to this method of virtual working. How much do we actually absorb and digest when we are reading emails on the run and furthermore, is the quality of our outgoing communication always as professional as it should be when sent from a handheld device?

There seems to be a growing culture of constant availability in many organisations. It is no longer a question of who stays latest in the office but who responds to emails quickest and latest and who is seen to be on line during evenings and weekends. And this constant availability increases expectations; as soon as we receive a request or question by email we feel the need to respond immediately often without giving it the time and focus to construct a thoughtful and appropriate response. It has been suggested in other studies that this constant checking and fiddling with gadgets is actually affecting users’ ability to concentrate and focus and this could cause a much greater and more long term impact on productivity than gaining an extra hour or two every day for reading and replying to emails.

Smart phones can be a great asset and few of us would want to return to the days without them but we need to be careful that they don’t take over our lives and remove our ability to focus on other, often more important, things.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Sep 11

The Art of Pausing

Communication Skills No Comments »

When we consider how we communicate it is all too easy to focus only on the words we use and the content we want to convey rather than the overall impact of our communication. Perhaps just as important is what isn’t said and the space between the words – the all too often neglected art of pausing. We are often in such a hurry to make our point, to get it all out, to make a good impression that we don’t take the time to consider the quality of our interaction or to reflect on what is being said. What is more, we often feel uncomfortable with silence and rush to fill it rather than giving the listener the chance to absorb what we have said and make sense of the message. Many of us are also guilty of thinking about what we want to say next rather than really listening to the other person so that rather than pausing to digest what has been said we jump straight in regardless.
Meeting Neustockimages i The Art of Pausing

© istockphoto.com/Neustockimages

 

Perhaps we should all challenge ourselves to feel more comfortable pausing – whether after speaking, before responding or even before hitting the send button. We probably won’t miss our turn or lose the opportunity to convey what we want to say but we might find that the quality of the communication improves as everyone involved has the opportunity to savour the meaning and reflect on what has been said.

If you really want to communicate with impact, you should seriously consider mastering the art of pausing and battle the urge to fill every silence. If you are giving a presentation or speaking at a formal meeting, remember to pause, and maybe even smile, after each of your main points. This will give more weight to your message and will allow your audience time to consider and really understand what you have said. When you are communicating one-to-one try pausing more frequently and you will find you come across more assertively and feel calmer particularly during potentially sensitive conversations. And finally, when you are communicating by email, always, always pause and pause again before you hit the send button.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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May 09

A New Punctuation and Spelling Test for British Primary Children?

Business Writing Skills, Communication Skills No Comments »

In response to current government thinking that standards in spelling, punctuation and grammar have fallen among British school leavers, the Department for Education plans to introduce an external SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) test that children will take before they leave primary school, as reported by the BBC. Head teachers have responded negatively to this new test questioning its validity and expense and are threatening to boycott its introduction.

Answer Sheet Ryan Balderas i A New Punctuation and Spelling Test for British Primary Children?

© istockphoto.com/Ryan Balderas

There has been a huge backlash from teachers and educationalists to the seemingly constant testing that British children are subjected to from a young age. Teachers are now obliged to teach to a narrow interpretation of the national curriculum and the focus is more on passing the tests rather than encouraging broader learning or on developing a curiosity for knowledge and its application. Head teachers are adamant that they and their staff should be trusted to assess and develop children’s writing abilities without resorting to formal testing.

However valid head teachers’ arguments are and however flawed this new test may be, few employers would disagree with the premise that many school leavers and university graduates are joining organisations with a lack of basic writing skills and a very scant knowledge of key principles of grammar, punctuation and spelling. This in turn results either in a very sloppy standard of written communication being sent out or in a considerable financial investment being made in grammar and punctuation training programmes to ensure that new employees convey a professional image of themselves and their organisation. The current proposal from the Department for Education appears to be in stalemate but the discussion needs to continue to ensure that solutions are put in place to ensure higher standards of writing among young British adults – if they don’t have a mastery of these basic communication skills they risk being disadvantaged in the job market.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Feb 02

What’s in an Acronym?

Business Writing Skills, Communication Skills, Email Writing Skills No Comments »

If someone asked you for a document ASAP, sent you one FYI or offered you some TLC you would most probably understand them. If they asked for the document by COB (close of business) or EOD (end of day) you might be less sure. Asked for the MO (Modus Operandi), would you know how to respond?

woman typing Dmitriy Shironosov i What’s in an Acronym?

© istockphoto.com/Dmitriy Shironosov

The Evening Standard has recently commented on the ubiquitous use of acronyms and the way in which they can confuse and exclude those who aren’t ‘in the know’. The writer was particularly aggravated by the use of acronyms in popular culture, citing her confusion at popular reality TV programmes, TOWIE, DOI and IACGMOOH. Look them up if you’re not sure!

For acronyms to be effective they should act as shorthand and speed up the exchange of information. With our ever faster pace of life together with the increased use of social media, particularly Twitter where the number of characters per message is limited to 140, it is not surprising that we have seen a multiplication of the number of acronyms used in every day language.

However, if we move to a professional setting, this increased use of acronyms can pose a number of problems. Firstly, what might seem a fun and friendly way of communicating between friends and personal contacts does not always convey a professional image in the workplace. Professional emails should be friendly but not overly informal. You might think that using acronyms such as LOL, TGIF or BFN help to build relationships but be aware that they might not create the right impression, particularly if your contact doesn’t know what they actually stand for.

Secondly, many professions or organisations create their own set of acronyms, all very useful for regular users but liable to baffle or perplex anyone from outside. Confusion grows even more when one acronym represents different expressions in different professions. CAT for example can signify Civil Air Transport, Cultural Awareness Training or Computer Assisted Training to name but a few. This can leave the bewildered newcomer or outsider confused and unsure whether to risk looking foolish and ask for an explanation or to remain in the dark.

Many organisations have now created their own in-house style guide to provide consistent guidelines to employees producing written communication. These style guides often include advice on when and how to use acronyms appropriately. However, the best advice is to use your common sense and if in any doubt spell it out in full. Why risk appearing smug and alienating your reader when a few more characters will make your message clear.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Jan 26

How do I Sound?

Communication Skills No Comments »

The British press including The Independent has recently been reporting on the current increase in demand for speech training and elocution lessons here in the UK. Over recent decades we have seen regional accents become less of a hindrance and sometimes even a plus point in sectors such as the media or in contact centres. However, the current economic climate, with jobs increasingly hard to find, is causing new job seekers and experienced professionals alike to re-examine their skills to ensure they can present themselves to the best of their abilities. And this skill set extends as far as how they speak with more and more people resorting to elocution lessons or speech training as a way of improving the way they come across.

Scripts catscandotcom i How do I Sound?

© istockphoto.com/Catscandotcom

It is one thing to turn to elocution lessons or voice coaching to improve the clarity, accuracy and pace of the way we speak and it is a positive sign that young school leavers and university graduates are keen to invest in their speaking skills in order to improve their success at job interviews. Experienced managers and professionals are also seeing the value of improving the way they speak in order to further their career development. An ability to speak clearly during meetings and formal presentations – particularly now that so much business communication takes place through virtual methods – is integral to business success and can often make one candidate for promotion stand out from another.

However, it is slightly more surprising that a key reason cited for approaching a voice coach or speech trainer is to soften a strong regional accent or even lose it altogether. People from the West Midlands, West Country and Essex are particularly keen to neutralise the way they sound as they fear that their strong local accent might be holding them back in their careers. It is understandable that people want to present themselves as clearly and professionally as possible in order to do well in a shrinking jobs market and this might mean softening sounds that make their speech less intelligible. And a less pronounced local accent may give people more credibility. But it seems strange in this day and age that someone would want to eliminate completely an important element of their identity such as their accent.

Good elocution lessons or speech training should enable individuals to identify and improve the elements of their speech that make them harder to understand without trying to change them into someone they’re not. Gone are the days, after all, when we should be striving to sound like the Queen in order to get on in life!

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Dec 09

Plain English or Gobbledegook?

Business Writing Skills, Communication Skills No Comments »

You may not be aware that today is National Plain English day. The BBC is reporting that The Plain English Campaign has announced this year’s booby prize for gobbledegook has been awarded to the Meteorological Office. The Plain English Campaign encourages organisations to communicate clearly and simply with the public and fights against the use of gobbledegook and jargon. Local councils, government departments, police forces, law firms, insurance companies and banks have all been taken to task in the past for baffling the public by communicating with meaningless and confusing language.

Dictionary English Christopher Ewing i Plain English or Gobbledegook?

© istockphoto.com/Christopher Ewing

This year the Met Office’s use of expressions such as ‘probabilities of precipitation’ in its new weather forecast has been voted the worst offender. Would it not be simpler to tell the public that it is likely to rain or it might rain rather than that there are ‘probabilities of precipitation’? Communicating in plain English means using an everyday word rather than a less commonly used (often Latinate) equivalent. Of course, the Met Office has argued that precipitation is not just rain but encompasses all sorts of ‘stuff that falls from the sky’ including hail, drizzle, snow, sleet and so on. But for most of us, it means it’s going to rain! The other plain English rule broken by the Met Office here is to ‘avoid nomilizations’ or in other words use verbs instead of nouns. Using two nouns, saying that there are ‘probabilities of precipitation’ sounds quite abstract and is more verbose than ‘it might rain’ which has no nouns and makes us understand that this really is likely to happen. We particularly need to avoid abstract nouns if we want to achieve a more intelligible communication style. This often means nouns ending in –ment such as arrangement or improvement or –tion such as modification, elaboration, precipitation, implementation and so on.

In a nutshell, communicating in plain English means using:

  • Shorter sentences
  • Words the public will understand
  • Personal pronouns
  • The active rather than the passive voice
  • More verbs than nouns
  • Instructions where appropriate
  • Lists

Plain English does not mean overly simplistic or childish communication but instead it means communicating in a way that will allow the audience to understand the message immediately. It can be difficult to train ourselves to break old habits and communicate in a style that helps our audience to understand our message rather than to understand how clever we are. This is why many individuals and organisations undertake communication skills or writing training programmes. These courses can raise awareness of what the audience needs to understand the message and introduce practical techniques to reduce the gobbledegook and ensure we are understood.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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Dec 05

Zero Tolerance to Emails at Work

Communication Skills, Email Writing Skills, Writing Skills No Comments »

How much time do you think you spend writing, reading, sorting and talking about emails while you are at work? Far too long is the most probable answer as many organisations and independent studies have reported that the average employee spends anything between two hours and more than 50% of their working day immersed in email correspondence.

woman typing Dmitriy Shironosov i Zero Tolerance to Emails at Work

© istockphoto.com/Dmitriy Shironosov

The Daily Telegraph has recently drawn to our attention that the head of Atos, one of Europe’s largest information technology services companies, is about to ban staff from sending each other emails. Thierry Breton has argued that sending internal emails is outdated and a waste of time, causing a huge loss of productivity. He has suggested that only 10% of the 200 or so emails his staff receive every day are likely to be useful and he is aiming to implement this ban in the next 18 months.

The dominance of email in the workplace can be extremely damaging to our productivity and is causing us to lose the ability to focus on any one task for an extended period of time. ORSE, an independent watchdog, has reported that 70% of new emails are reacted to within six seconds and it then takes us an average of 64 seconds to resume working at the same rate as before the interruption. It is not difficult to do the maths and work out the enormous cost of time wasted on constant email monitoring.

For the time being, a complete zero tolerance to email may be a step to far for most organisations but many companies are now putting in place email policies which guide their employees in the appropriate use of email. The tips below should help individuals to use email as an effective business tool rather than a crutch they can’t live without.

As a sender of emails consider making the following changes to save time and improve your own and your colleagues’ productivity

  • Consider very carefully who you copy in to your emails and don’t be afraid to remove recipients from ongoing email threads when you know it is no longer relevant for them
  • Consider even more carefully sending emails to large distribution groups such as the entire division or office. Does everyone really need to know that you have lost your stapler or your voice or that the sandwich vendor is running late?
  • Before you send a sensitive email think about whether it would be more appropriate to grab five minutes on the phone or even better face-to-face with the recipient – and never ever use email to express negative emotion
  • If you are sending an email to update your manager or team, make sure you are not simply ‘blowing your own trumpet’ or sharing trivial information but that you really have an important message to share
  • Never chase or ask for progress updates long before the agreed deadline – this is only likely to frustrate or worse distract the recipient from completing the task
  • Make sure you have all the information you need to send to your recipient before you hit the send button – it can be irritating to receive three emails on the same topic just because the sender was in too much of a hurry to think it through

As an email recipient, help yourself by following the tips below:

  • Turn off all your email alerts so that your senses are not distracted each time a new email arrives and you can continue to focus on the task in hand
  • Discipline yourself to check your emails only once an hour or ideally once every couple of hours. It is rare that something is so urgent it can’t wait an hour or so and if it really is imperative that you respond the sender can usually find another way of contacting you. We also need to train our colleagues not to expect immediate responses from us
  • Respond to your emails in batches if possible – when you open an email that has an easy answer reply directly and delete or file it rather than closing it and then reading again later
  • Create folders with rules so that updates, newsletters and other emails you know are not urgent can be automatically directed into a dedicated folder to be read at a later stage – if you find you never read them then unsubscribe
  • If you know that the morning, for example, is your most productive time of day don’t waste the first hour or so of your day responding to non-urgent emails

Email writing, etiquette and management can be a minefield and it can take an outside perspective for us to take on quite simple tips and strategies that will help us to ensure that email helps rather than hinders our professional life. Professional email writing training programmes can help you to re-evaluate the way you currently manage your email and to put in place better practice for using this business tool more effectively and efficiently.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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Sep 05

Communicating from the Top-down

Communication Skills No Comments »

The Evening Standard has recently identified good communication skills as essential for ensuring managers are not seen as ‘horrible bosses’. The article is clearly very light-hearted but it highlights important messages to all managers about the importance of creating excellent professional relationships and developing an authentic and credible communication style.

Businessmen viewed from top sjlocke i Communicating from the Top down

© istockphoto.com/ Sean Locke

Successful senior managers and leaders develop their communication skills not only to inform and instruct but to inspire and engage with their staff. If leaders want to ensure that the operational, behavioural and strategic changes they envisage are implemented they need to ensure that they communicate these messages clearly and appropriately through the right channels to the right people at the right time. They need to be sure that their non-verbal communication matches the words they use or if they communicate by email that their tone of voice has the right balance of credibility and approachability.

When good leaders communicate they put themselves in the shoes of employees and think about how they can encourage their staff to engage with and believe in their messages – and in turn, engage with the organisation. Engaging and empathetic communication from the top is more likely to inspire loyalty and to motivate employees to work better and harder for their organisation

Good leaders are also good listeners and are conscious that communication is a two way process. They are able to ask the right questions and they value and give credit to the fact that many of their staff may have expertise that they do not share or solve problems where they have struggled.

Creating the right impact as a leader or senior manager is about much more than being liked or something ‘touchy feely’ but it is also about ensuring the credibility not only of the individual but also the organisation they represent. Good communication skills are not a ‘nice to have’ but an essential set of tools for any leader managing teams, projects or campaigns. Leaders or senior managers who have risen through the ranks more for their technical than their interpersonal skills will benefit from targeted communication skills training programmes that will enable them to become more aware of their own communication style and develop skills to create more positive impact on those they are leading.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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